Prologue
Two Years Ago…
“The worst part is, I never saw it coming.” Vanessaforced herself to focus, realizing she’d somehow missed a good portion of this meeting while attempting to sort things out in her own head. When she found the Mended Hearts Divorce Support Group, she’d hoped coming to this meeting, listening to people who had learned how to properly move on, would shine a light on ways to get past all this ugliness that seemed to dog her every waking moment of the day.
An older man with a full head of wavy white hair spoke. He wore stylish glasses and was dressed in a casual polo shirt and jeans. He looked like someone’s wise old uncle as he walked toward the makeshift aisle and turned to face the group seated in the audience.
His watery gaze landed on Vanessa, as if he imagined there was some sort of commiserating bond between them. It made her uncomfortable. Sitting in a community center divorce support group was the last place she wanted her presence acknowledged or to make an emotional connection to the people around her. The few friends she had left after parting ways with Karl would shun her if they saw her here, huddled in the back row of what looked like a gymnasium that doubled as an auditorium.
Needing to distance herself, she took in the layout of the room. There was a small stage at the front, closed bleachers pushed against the wall in the back, and basketball hoops facing each other on each side wall.
Folding chairs were set up in theater style in the middle of the room, a fact she was grateful for. She’d assumed she’d be walking into a dreaded kumbaya circle with them all holding hands as they shared what she assumed would be one bitter divorce story after another.
The heavens were smiling on her, apparently. They had spared her that embarrassment. At least this way, she could sit in the back row and keep her distance and her secrets. Back here, no one ever had to know the specifics of her circumstances. No one ever had to know what Karl had forced her to become: his victim.
She settled into that thought, recognizing its significance. After nearly a year in therapy, she was finally able to understand and believe she hadn’t done anything to deserve Karl’s mistreatment of her. Everything she had experienced and was currently experiencing was his fault.
Giving up on her battle to focus, she took a glance over to her immediate right. The coveted seat closest to the door was occupied. A deep-toned brown beauty with full, round cheeks high on her oval face sat there, smiling at Vanessa. She wiggled her fingers in Vanessa’s direction as she purposely scooted around in the seat Vanessa wanted.
Vanessa crossed her legs and straightened her back, refusing to let the woman see her need. She was Vanessa Scott; she’d spent a lifetime pretending to be unbothered, hiding her needs and her pain.
She closed her eyes to her therapist’s voice reminding her that covering up her pain might not be such a great idea. Pretending was a survival instinct at this point. For good or ill, it was one of the only tools she had to keep the outside world from trampling her to death.
She tightened her body to prevent the shiver she felt circling the bottom of her spine waiting to vibrate through the rest of her body. If she started shaking, the ruse would be up and everyone would know she was only pretending to be Vanessa Scott.
As of two weeks ago, her divorce was finalized, and she was officially Vanessa Jared again. But who the hell was Vanessa Jared?
She’d spent so much time pretending to be Karl’s perfect mate. He’d spent years molding her into what he wanted—an empty husk that only lived to provide and consider his pleasure—that she’d lost touch with her former self. Now, the only thing she seemed able to connect with was the anger over her divorce. The ugly bitterness that made her want to tie her lying, cheating ex’s lips in a knot to stop him from spewing his crap.
It wasn’t just the cheating, Vanessa, and you know that.
If only it were. The cheating she could’ve gotten past as soon as the documents were signed. The fear and pain that caused her to question every aspect of her life—every decision she made—regretfully had nothing to do with Karl’s cheating and everything to do with the emotional abuse he’d heaped on her for more than two decades.
“A lady never scowls, Vanessa. It will give you wrinkles. Black might not crack, but it will sho fade if you don’t take care of it, so fix yo’ face.”Another of her ma’dea’s pearls of Black girl magic wisdom. How she missed that old spitfire and all the times she’d poured love into Vanessa’s life. If she were alive, Vanessa wouldn’t be here trying to find help with strangers. She’d be sitting at her grandmother’s table with a slice of sweet potato pie topped with whole cranberry sauce instead.
Vanessa ached for the certainty of those days spent with her grandmother. Back then, she knew exactly who Vanessa Jared was: a bright, curious child who loved numbers just as much as she did pretty clothes. A happy girl who loved to play in her grandmother’s shoe closet and jewelry box and wanted to take care of the financesof her friends and family the way her ma’dea and pop-pop did. A girl who knew her own strength and didn’t cower at the thought of stepping out into the world and making her own decisions.
After Karl spent years taking an emotional ax to her confidence, Vanessa truly missed that little girl.
Unfortunately, her head couldn’t shake the years she’d endured Karl’s control over every aspect of her life. The fear of her abuser, the fear of losing herself again, even though she hadn’t quite found the person she wanted to be, it all kept her trapped in her own head reliving the emotional torture her ex doled out with abandon. It was paralyzing her. Keeping her from moving beyond her fear and pain.
That’s why she was here. Immediately after filing for divorce and seeing how fragile Vanessa was, her attorney had recommended she get into therapy. She’d balked at the idea initially. Black folks didn’t go to therapy. They prayed, they threw themselves into things to distract themselves, or worse, they took on unhealthy, harmful habits that slowly ate away at their insides.
But when she’d found herself questioning whether her filing for divorce was an overreaction, she recognized that her thinking wasn’t healthy. She quickly found a qualified therapist who was luckily a good fit for her.
Vanessa shut down those thoughts and tried again to focus on the man standing at the front of the room, wiping his face while trying to compose himself enough to speak his next sentence. “It’s been twelve years since she left me”—he sniffed loudly, wiping his nose on his plaid sleeve—“and I still can’t figure out where it all went wrong.”
“Did he just say twelve years?” she whispered, except the concealed-in-a-cough giggle coming from her row mate in the coveted seat closest to the door revealed she hadn’t been quiet enough.
Trying hard to school her features, she swept the room with her gaze, praying no one else had heard her. When her row mate came into view again, the smiling woman pointed a finger at the doorway to a woman who was gesturing for them to come to her.
Vanessa paused for a beat, looking around at Mr. Snotty Nose in the front of the room, and decided whatever this woman at the doorway wanted had to be better than witnessing this.
She and her row mate stood up at the same time and quietly padded out of the room one after the other. They followed the stranger into the building’s entryway, where the three of them stood facing each other, like the points on a triangle.
“I don’t know about the two of you”—she rolled her dark brown eyes before sharing a bright, wide smile with Vanessa and her row mate—“but if I have to listen to Fred tell his twelve years of loneliness tale again, I will scream. The expressions you two had on your faces tell me you’re probably feeling the same. Could I interest the two of you in a drink at the bar across the street instead? First round’s on me.”
The stranger’s skin was a warm amber color; her hair, cropped close in a dark Caesar haircut, accented her sharp cheekbones. She was tall, with full curves, the sweater dress and knee-high boots accentuating every one of them in the best way possible. With her hand on her hip and a spark of mischief in her eyes, the stranger exuded everything Vanessa had never been and wished she could be: happy, confident, and free.
